Northrop Grumman selected to lead US Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense Weapon System software transformation.

An announcement made only this Wednesday, Jan.8, 2020, by Northrop Grumman, the company was awarded a $70 million, 28-month contract on Nov. 6, 2019, to transform the software development process for the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Battle Command System (IBCS) to an agile development framework.

U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery soldiers participating in an IBCS Agile Pilot Sprint Review at one of Northrop Grumman’s software integration laboratories in Huntsville, Alabama (Picture source: Northrop Grumman)

Under the contract, awarded by the Aviation Missile Technology Consortium (AMTC), Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Army will partner to prototype an agile development process in order to build, test and field capabilities faster to respond to current and emerging needs.

As part of the Agile Technical Insertion initiative, IBCS was designated among a number of high priority programs to adopt an agile development methodology to enable maturation of the system. “This contract brings IBCS into a new era of software development, enabling the rapid integration of new capabilities and improvements to further IBCS’s survivable battle management architecture using an agile software development process,” said Dan Verwiel, vice president and general manager, combat systems and mission readiness defense systems, Northrop Grumman. “By combining our industry leading capabilities in agile software development and DevSecOps with our extensive expertise on the IBCS program, we can rapidly respond to warfighter requirements and bring innovative solutions to IBCS.”

With its open systems architecture, IBCS allows incorporation of current and future sensors and effectors, and enables interoperability with joint C2 and the ballistic missile defense system. This modular open system architecture optimizes the benefits of agile techniques and methodologies, including frequent, ongoing and rapid “agile sprints” to develop and test incremental software advancements. This transformational approach will enable greater responsiveness to current and emerging needs that support mission objectives and avoid costly rework later in the development cycle.

Designed to connect the force for unified action against evolving threats, IBCS is a net-centric command and control system for the air and missile defense mission. IBCS enhances battlefield survivability by creating a resilient self-healing network of all available sensors that can reduce and eliminate vectors of attack while providing operators with a single integrated air picture of unprecedented accuracy and a broader defended area.

IBCS is managed by the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.